Old Meets New: Modern Home Within a Stone Barn

We have all walked by, driven near or flown over them: those mysterious runs of old stone or brick buildings, possibly hundreds of years old, left to the elements. What would it be like, however, to live inside of such a structure.

This modern home was designed by NRJA to fit inside of an existing structure – in this case the remains of a simple stone barn – in Latvia on the coast of the Baltic. The existing walls provide visual privacy as well as a warm textured contrast to the modernist house set within their perimeter.

Very little of the exterior structure required alteration as the pieces could be easily brought in via existing openings and there is little attempt to connect directly to it from the inside building. In essence, the old and new co-exist amicably – though perhaps someday this will be an even more interesting ruin-within-a-ruin.